]]>The U.S. Department of Energy said on Wednesday it’s offering a partial guarantee for a $1.4 billion loan that will fund Project Amp, which will erect solar panels on hundreds of rooftops around the country. The project is the largest rooftop solar plan in the country.

The financial aid is the first DOE loan guarantee that isn’t going to a large, centralized solar power plant. Amp Project will install 733 MW of solar on about 750 rooftops run by Prologis, which owns and manages distribution warehouses in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Electricity from the project will be sold to utilities. Prologis and NRG Solar will co-own the project, said NRG spokeswoman Lori Neuman.

The loan guarantee applicant is Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which will provide the loan. The DOE is offering the partial guarantee under the Financial Institution Partnership Program (FIPP). FIPP is part of a loan guarantee program created by the stimulus package to boost job creation and clean power generation.

Through a loan guarantee, the government promises to repay the loan if the borrower can’t. The DOE didn’t specify how much of the $1.4 billion loan for Project Amp it is guaranteeing. The FIPP program allows the DOE to back 80 percent of a loan. FIPP focuses on backing projects that use more mature technologies, and it relies on private investors to secure the loans. In another part of the loan guarantee program, the government will provide the loans as well, through the Federal Financing Bank.

Project Amp will be carried out in phases. NRG Energy is the lead investor in the first phase, which will include a 15.4 MW array in Southern California. Southern California Edison will buy power from phase 1 of the project, which could add solar in as many as 28 states and the District of Columbia. Construction of the 15.4 MW project will begin before Sept. 30 this year.

In addition to the loan guarantee for Project Amp, the DOE has backed large solar farms in other regions of California and other southwestern states. Those projects include a 500 MW solar farm (part of a 1,000 MW project) by Solar Trust Of America, which held a ground breaking ceremony for the project in California last week. Another one under construction is a 392 MW plant in California by BrightSource Energy.

]]>Last night I watched with morbid fascination as a group of talking heads on CNBC discussed the fall (and subsequent bankruptcy) of Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old firm that survived the Great Depression, two world wars, and a devastating attack on the American way of life. Yet the investment back could not survive greed, nor its enslavement to the quarterly earnings cycle. Neither could Merrill Lynch, which agreed to sell itself to Bank of America, nor insurance giant AIG, which was scrambling to avoid a credit downgrade that threatened to put it out of business as well.

I watched the drama unfold and wondered if and when this tsunami unleashed by subprime loans and the subprime intelligence of our bankers would reach Silicon Valley. Unable to grasp the nuances of it all, I turned to Bill Hambrecht, one of the Valley’s legendary bankers and co-founder of Hambrecht & Quist, which took some of the largest tech players in the world public. (Disclosure: For a brief while I worked at H&Q Asia Pacific, one of the many offshoots of H&Q.)

H&Q was eventually sold to Chase, which is now part of JP Morgan. Bill went on to start W.R. Hambrecht & Co., a boutique investment bank that uses auctions to sell company stock — most notably those of Google in its IPO. Bill, to put it bluntly, has seen it all — the good, the bad and the ugly. So I stopped by his office in downtown San Francisco earlier this morning to talk about the economic disorder.

I was expecting to find him deeply worried; instead he was amazingly optimistic and, most importantly, wholly confident in the Silicon Valley way of life. Disruption will always prevail, he said, despite the current crisis, the rise of China and any of our backward government policies.

“I don’t think it will have much of an impact on Silicon Valley as an operating entity,” he remarked when I asked him how the current crisis would affect Silicon Valley. “What is going to be interesting is what happens to the underwriting/IPO market.” In other words, fewer underwriters will be focus on tech companies — unless they’re really big, he said. In other words, it’s just like old times, like back when he started H&Q.

I loved this conversation so much that I decided to share the entire 25-minute chat with you. Roll the tape.

The cities, including New York, Denver, Las Vegas, Saint Paul and Portland, will report the carbon emissions of all activities under their budgetary oversight, including emergency services, municipal buildings and waste management. The cities will use ICLEI’s (formerly the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) Local Government Operations Protocol and software tools to track and profile the information, which will be published in the first CDP Cities Report and ICLEI Local Action Network Report in January 2009.

Founded in 2000, the CPD has big goals and big name signatories. As of 2008, the CPD had gotten 3,000 of the world’s largest companies to respond to its carbon risks and opportunities questionnaire, and it hopes to get all S&P 500 companies to participate. Its web site represents the largest repository of corporate greenhouse gas emissions data in the world, according to the group. Much of the information is made publicly available, allowing policymakers to see the carbon costs of business to inform the regulatory process.

But it’s also good for private sector players to track the carbon risks associated with their investments. Merrill Lynch, who helps fund the CPD, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG Investments, Barclays and HSBC are all “signatory investors” in the CPD, have access to information not publicly available. These huge investors are already dealing with carbon regulation in the European market and expect America will soon follow suit; when that happens, they’ll need baseline info on their existing investments to start gauging carbon-related risk. Many of these companies are also tracking carbon credits and cleantech indices.

]]>Vulcan Power, a company with one of the larger geothermal project portfolios, says it has received an investment of $145 million from Boston-based private equity firm Denham Capital. The sizable funding has been planned for awhile, as last year Vulcan raised $45 million from Merrill Lynch Commodity Partners (a subsidiary of Merrill Lynch) in what the company said was part of a larger planned $150 million in financing.

Vulcan says in the release it will use the funds to build out geothermal sites it says could generate a whopping 900 MW to 2 GW of steam power. That could provide clean power for as much as 2 million people. Based in Bend, Ore., the 17-year-old company has geothermal projects on more than 160,000 acres of private and federal lands.

Compared to solar and wind, geothermal is a renewable energy source that gets a lot less attention and investment dollars. The process involves drilling down and tapping into heated water reserves and converting the steam into power. The drawback is that the technology can only be used on select geothermal sites, which are limited. But geothermal sites can provide a sizable amount of power, and Vulcan’s power plants can generate in the hundreds of megawatts.

Vulcan has already done several power purchase agreement with utilities in Western United States, including Southern California Edison for 120 MW and PG&E and Nevada Power Company for a total of 300 MW. Vulcan says it is also working on another 300 MW of geothermal power supply contracts with utilities.

Vulcan may be one of the bigger companies but there are several other geothermal site holders out there that have sizable plots. Calpine Corp. owns and operates 19 power plants in The Geysers site in Northern California that combined can generate 725 MW of clean power. Western GeoPower also owns considerable assets at The Geysers. AltaRock Energy is a Seattle-based startup that is building geothermal technology.

]]>Merrill Lynch sold its 20 percent stake in Bloomberg LP for $4.4 billion to the company, which exercised its right of first refusal. Initial reports had the stake going to founder Michael Bloomberg’s private trust but the company preempted other buyers, including the New York City mayor. Bloomberg LP is borrowing from Merrill to finance the acquisition. Release.

Update: The sale came up numerous times during ML’s earnings call. One excerpt from the transcript (via Seeking Alpha): UBS analyst Glenn Schorr asks ML CEO John Thain: “On the Bloomberg, I thought it was thought to be a good cash flower and a good yield and a good earner for Merrill. Can you just help me and re-explain why there

]]>And it sounds like earlier details were basically correct… WSJ is reporting that Merrill has reached a deal to sell its 20 percent in financial news service Bloomberg for $4.5-$5 billion. The buyer is Bloomberg LP, which had a right of first refusal. News of an imminent deal at this prace was first reported last week. There’s no word on when the announcement will be made, but it could come as early as tomorrow, when capital-hungry Merill announces quarterly earnings to much anticipation.

]]>As has been rumored fro a few weeks now, Merrill Lynch is in negotiations to sell its 20 percent stake in Bloomberg, as the cash-strapped investment firm is looking for ways to raise more money, reports NYP. A blind trust run by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the founder, is emerging as the probable buyer. Merrill owns a 20 percent stake in the financial data provider, and provided seed money in 1981 for the mayor to launch the business. Bloomberg also has the right of first refusal to buy the stake, and with limited number of buyers, that seems the most likely possibility.

Analysts have valued Merrill’s stake at about $5 billion to $6 billion, but no agreement has been reached over the valuation, reports NYTimes. In a twist, Merrill may help Bloomberg finance a buyback of the stake, the story says.

]]>The GBM team has a slew of gear, gradgets and generally good stuff that they’re giving away right now. It’s their Christmas in July contest and there’s no less than three or four dozen items up for grabs. You won’t know what’s being given away when, so you have to stay active in the comments and forums for a shot! There’s a UMPC in there, some Zunes, an iPod, software and more, so don’t be shy on their site. Speak up!

“Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail.” — Eliot Spitzer, (then) Attorney General, New York State.

This is what New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had to say in late 2005, the year before he became NY governor, when I asked him for a contribution to Business2.0 magazine’s annual My Golden Rule feature, a collection of “life lessons” from admirable leaders worldwide.

Spitzer’s contribution was popular with my B2.0 editors — playing, as it did, off the raft of corporate criminal trials taking place across the country at that time (Martha Stewart, Frank Quattrone, Tyco, Worldcom, Adelphia, Enron).

Now The New York Times has broken the story that Spitzer has been linked to a high-end prostitution ring. People were expecting a resignation yesterday, bringing to a cataclysmic end what was — only a few years ago — one of the most respected legal and political careers in the country. The great irony here: Spitzer was caught in the FBI’s dragnet thanks to some taped phone calls and a few unseemly text messages authored by, none-other-than.

As NY’s Attorney General, Spitzer rose to national fame between 1998 and 2006 for his take-no-prisoners ethics campaign to clean up Wall Street after the excesses of the dotcom boom.

It was Spitzer who, in 2002, broke the analyst-investment banker-racket that helped fuel the Internet IPO bubble, forcing a $1.4 billion settlement from a phalanx of banks including Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley. He went after mutual fund brokers for market timing, NYSE chief Dick Grasso for “excessive” pay, and in 2005 he filed a civil fraud suit against AIG CEO Hank Greenberg when criminal charges wouldn’t stick. Spitzer does not believe in sacred cows.

For such feats Spitzer was dubbed the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” and became a thought-leader on ethics and good governance to business people, politicians and journalists who frequently sought his pithy commentary — of which there was plenty, until yesterday.

Here is a transcript of Gov. Spitzer’s “apology to the public,” delivered from his Manhattan office Monday. (We get it from Sewell Chan of the NYTimes):

Over the past nine years, eight as attorney general and one as governor, I’ve tried to uphold a vision of progressive politics that would rebuild New York and create opportunity for all. We vowed to bring real change to New York and that will continue. Today, I want to briefly address a private matter. I have acted in a way that violated the obligations to my family and that violates my — or any — sense of right and wrong. I apologize first, and most importantly, to my family. I apologize to the public, to whom I promised better. I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas, the public good and doing what is best for the State of New York. But I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard that I expected of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family. I will not be taking questions. Thank you very much. I will report back to you in short order. Thank you very much.

There is so much irony in this downfall it exhausts even the most evil humor, dripping uncomfortably into tragedy. Did I mention that Spitzer prosecuted a prostitution ring in 2004?

Spitzer was unforgiving of those who transgressed, so this will get ugly. (Calls for his resignation are getting louder today.) At a FastCompany magazine event in Miami in 2003 he trumpeted the high value of pursuing criminal trials, rather than merely civil trials, for white collar wrongdoers:

“The only thing that forces [people] to change their bad behavior is shame, and by this I mean, the shame of a perp walk in front of the cameras….seeing their picture on the front page of the papers.”

Such a “corrective shaming” Spitzer is now experiencing for himself. “A private matter” he says? Not when you’re an elected official, it’s criminal behavior, and you’ve made your career off of prosecuting others for the same. Come on, this isn’t leadership. No sacred cows here, remember?

So take this as just one more cautionary tale: Power corrupts, absolutely. Do we really need to learn this over and over and over again?

]]>With the launch of the FTSE ET50 Index, which is devoted to following 50 large cleantech stocks from around the globe, Wall Street has gone from spotting a trend to beating it to death with specialized financial products. There are now more than three dozen clean technology or sustainable energy funds, and many of them contain companies that overlap.

Last March, in a nod to the cleantech movement’s popularity among investors, Standard & Poor’s created several indexes related to clean technology. The goal, according to an S&P spokesperson, was to create transparency and a benchmark for investors interested in putting money into exchange-traded funds or individual clean energy stocks. (S&P licenses its indexes to fund companies, but does not manage any funds.)

Robert Wilder, creator of the WilderHill Clean Energy Index (which he says is called the “granddaddy of the clean tech indexes”), may be to blame. He and co-founder Josh Landess started investing clients’ money in clean technology stocks in the late 90s, only to see much of the value wiped out in the market crash of 2000. After realizing that not all of the cleantech companies lost value, he created his first index, and then convinced fund company PowerShares to create a fund around it.

Now several organizations, such as The Cleantech Network and Clean Edge, have their own indexes as well, which they have licensed out to fund companies in exchange for a percentage of the money under management in them. Other well-known indexes include the four that make up the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, which was created in 1999; the NASDAQ Clean Edge U.S. Indexes that were created in 2006; and the Cleantech Index that was launched in October February2006.

As the market for index funds gets more crowded, financial folks are getting more creative. Merrill Lynch launched its Energy Efficiency Index; it includes companies focused on energy efficiency. Barclays Capital launched the Capital Global Carbon Index to track carbon credits and the carbon emissions market. Wilder took a different tack and launched the WilderHill Progressive Energy Index, which is comprised of old-line fuel companies that can make an impact by improving their sustainable practices. He’s also convinced that in the coming year or two, some of the indexes will have to consolidate, or else will fail to draw in enough capital and be forced to fold.

Aside from index funds, which passively track a basket of pre-selected stocks, there are also a slew of actively managed green mutual funds that have launched in the last year. Winslow Management has two, including a newly launched Winslow Green Solutions Fund created in November 2007, and its Winslow’s Green Growth Fund, which began in 2001. Socially responsible mutual fund company Calvert launched its Global Alternative Energy Fund in May 2007.

With all of the choices out there for retail investors, it’s comforting to know that as venture firms shove even more cash into clean technology companies, those of us with shallower pockets can join in, too.